Top executives at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce were amongthose to share their concerns about the DOL’s upcomingre-release of its fiduciary rule with Labor Secretary Thomas Perezand National Economic Council Director Jeffrey Zients.

In a letter last week, two chamber leaders highlighted concernswith the DOL's reliance on prohibited transaction exemptionsto “mold” the definition of fiduciary under the Employee RetirementIncome Security Act, as well as the DOL’s attempts to regulaterollovers.

The players in the debate over the rule have been waitingfor the DOL to send it to the Office of Management and Budget foranalysis since late January.

David Hirschmann, president of the Chamber’s Center for CapitalMarkets Employee Benefits Competiveness, and Randel Johnson, seniorvice president of Labor Immigration and Benefits, say they “aretroubled by the possibility of a rule with an overly broadapplication and significant reliance upon administrative prohibitedtransaction exemptions,” or PTEs, to shape a revamped fiduciarydefinition, according to the letter.

Under this approach, they continue, “everything is prohibitedunless DOL specifically allows it. Almost by definition, this willcreate a rigid one-size-fits-all regulatory approach that will makeit harder to serve current investors, particularly in smalleraccounts.”

The two chamber executives also wrote that DOL’s efforts touse administrative PTEs “to ‘shape’ the definition of a fiduciary will unnecessarily complicate,and increase costs attendant to, the provision of much-neededservices to plans and their participants, as well as to IRAbeneficiaries.”

Investors as well as regulated service providers — and the DOL —would benefit if the agency were to first “issue anadvanced notice of proposed rulemaking, including possible PTEs,before it proposes a rule,” the two wrote.

Historically, DOL has used administrative PTEs to address “veryfact specific transactions with respect to which relief is oftenconditioned on accommodating a one-size-fits-all approach and/orbusiness model to permissibly enter into the defined transaction,”the two chamber executives pointed out, adding that DOL will likelyhave to devote “significant resources to this process as PTEs oftentake several rounds of drafting to ensure that they areworkable.”

What’s more, the two argued, even if the exemptions “effectivelyaddress concerns today, the market for financial products andservices is continually evolving,” and such exemptive relief “thatis sufficient today may well become obsolete constraininginnovation in the marketplace.”

The two chamber execs also point out that retirement saversalready are protected by “robust” rules issued by the Securitiesand Exchange Commission and Financial Industry RegulatoryAuthority, and that DOL’s efforts to put individual retirementaccounts and rollovers under fiduciary advice would duplicate SECand FINRA rules.

They note the SEC and FINRA have both made protecting retirementsavings one of their examination priorities for 2015.

“The chamber believes that regulation of our financial marketsis most effective when it both enables ample well-disclosed choicesfor investors and ensures adequate investor protections,” the twoexecs explained. “This is particularly true of retirement savings.We strongly believe no approach by DOL will successfully achieveboth of these goals unless it is considered in the context of thebroader regulatory and enforcement regimes impacting theseservices.”